AMS 200 - Reasearch and Teaching in AMS

Fall 2010

URL: www.soe.ucsc.edu/classes/ams2000/Fall10/

Professor:
Bruno Sansó
Hours:
Tues. 4 to 5:45 
Room:
Soc Sci II 141
Office:
Baskin 139
Office Hours:
TBA
e-mail:
bruno @ ams.ucsc.edu

CLASS INFORMATION

This clas is intended for graduate students, either PhD or MS in the program of Statistics and Applied Mathematics. For them, this is a required class. The enrollment is restricted to graduate students and the course topics are: Basic teaching techniques for teaching assistants, including responsibilities and rights, resource materials, computer skills, leading discussion or lab sessions, presentation techniques maintaining class records, and grading. Examines research and professional training, including use of library, technical writing, giving talks in seminars and conferences, and ethical issues in science and engineering.

Different topics will be taught by different AMS faculty.

Syllabus

Date Instructor Topics Homework Further information
9/28 Nic Brummell/Bruno Sansó Campus/School/Department structure. Academic requirements for AMS graduate students. Who to talk to about what (Tracie Tucker etc). Resources within the department and the university (my.ucsc.edu, calendars, websites, AMS mailing lists etc). AMS department and SOE events. Discussion of master projects, Ph.D. advancement to candidacy and thesis committees. Looking for an advisor. Create a homepage and post it on SOE website. Start thinking about NSF Graduate Research Fellowship application. Grad student info handout: Fellowship info: Some very useful information on how to do Fellowship applications:
10/5 Herbie Lee How to be a TA. TA responsibilities and rights (including initial discussion of ethics: sexual harassment/Title IX, etc). Advice on running discussion sections, grading and maintaining class records. WebCT. Teaching tips. How to be a GSR, including GSR responsibilities and rights. Read the section of "How to learn" on lenses. As a group of 1-4 people, select one of the four lenses and analyze one of your current AMS classes through this lens. Email one or two paragraphs with your analysis to Herbie. Handouts for Week2:
10/12 Nic Brummel/Athanasios Kottas Computational resources in AMS and SOE, (SOE servers, department clusters including GRAPE other computing resources). Available software. Brief introduction on common software used in applied mathematics and statistics (HTML, R, IDL, MATLAB, Mathematica,). Intro to use of library resources. Learn to write a Matlab GUI code or a Matlab animation code.
10/19 Existing AMS grads Questions and answers with senior AMS graduates. Prepare NSF Graduate Research Fellowship application.
10/26 Qi Gong How to use Latex for scientific writing. How to include pictures in papers: use epsfig, subfigure Latex package, pdf vs. postcript. How to write a report. How to write/present a mathematical proof. Advice on good writing. How to write a bio/CV. Write a sample report using Latex including mathematical proofs. NSF Graduate Research Fellowships due Nov 2nd-12th. Handouts for Week 5:
11/2 Raquel Prado Preparing slides using Latex (Beamer, Prosper packages). How to produce posters (where to print and some design guildlines). Prepare slides for scientific presentations, control timing, handle Q/A. Advice on how to give scientific presentations and talks. Prepare slides for short presentation (next two weeks). Handouts for Week 6:
11/9 Marc Mangel Public speaking skills: Practice with a short oral presentations. Videotaping and critique. Prepare 3 min presentation on "How you ended up here". and 5 min scientific presentation
11/16 Marc Mangel Public speaking skills: Practice with a short oral presentations. Videotaping and critique. Useful materials:
11/23 Abel Rodríguez Ethics: Sexual Harassment/Title IX; computer security; software copyright. (TA responsibilities should be already covered). Responsibilities for research integrity. Who should be included as co-authors on a paper? Publication and human subjects issues. Ethics materials:
11/30 Bruno Sansó Concluding remarks. Self and instructor evaluations.